A merchant (retailer) is an online company who sell their products and/or services through an Affiliate Network. The merchant will pay a percentage/set amount once a transaction has completed. To find out more information on what merchant will pay - please visit the Join Merchants in your Affiliate Account.

An affiliate (also known as a publisher or advertiser) is somebody whose purpose is to drive traffic to a merchant. They can do this by featuring the banners, text links or products of a merchant on their site.

How do Affiliates make money

If a user is browsing on an affiliates site, sees a product they like and clicks on the link (which takes them through to the merchant page) the affiliate will not be paid.

If however, the user then purchases this product, the affiliate will be paid as they have provided the merchant with a customer.

If you are a shopping directory affiliate you will simply provide a list of all the merchants on your site, including a short description about what they do and occasionally providing reviews of their services.

ShopWindow partners

Shopwindow partners make use of the shopwindow tools and functionality to help power their website.

Cashback and reward affiliates give a percentage of the commission that they earn back to their users. In the case of cashback affiliates, this is in the form of cash and in the case of reward affiliates this is in the form of ‘points’ which can be redeemed to purchase other goods.

How do I get traffic to my site?

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" (or "organic") search results. The higher a site or page is listed or “ranked”, the more visible it will be as well as more relevant to the user. This can increase the volume and quality of traffic to your site.

In order to improve the ranking of your site you need to consider how search engines work and what people search for. Optimising your website will therefore involve editing and improving content in order to improve it’s natural search listings

Pay per click involves paying a search engine every time a user clicks on a link that to visit either a merchant's website or your own website. You will typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to your target market to ensure that you only pay when you believe there is a chance of a sale.

When a user types a keyword query matching your keyword list, your advertisement may be displayed. These advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages. Content websites commonly charge a fixed price for a click.

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